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IN our Autumn 1967 issue we published an article, ‘The Stripdex Catalogue’, by Peter Stephen, deputy borough librarian of Middleton (LIBRARY REVIEW, vol. 21, no. 3, Autumn 1967, p. 137–9). We have now received from Wilfred J. Plumbe, University Librarian, University of Malawi, Limbe, Malawi, the comments which follow.

The techniques of library work are the same in every latitude and longitude. It follows, therefore, that similarities between librarianship in the tropics and elsewhere are very much more noticeable than differences. Nevertheless, there are many minor contrasts and differences; and it is some of these that we will try to describe.

Public relations departments have done their job and people coming to Africa and Asia no longer expect to find us living in mud huts, picking our way to work between pythons and puff‐adders, or speaking in words of one syllable to our local library staff. Instead, our large white concrete buildings, our well‐educated and multilingual local staffs—many of them now holding senior positions—our enquiry desks, batteries of microfilms, punched cards, and other gadgetry, and the comfort in which many of us live, are taken for granted by the increasing number of professional visitors who find their way to us from the Western world.

“Here are the literature references,” wrote Bernard. “As you are being paid for the article my typist, who has looked up most of the authors and titles for you, says she will want her cut.”

The white buildings of Ahmadu Bello University lie between the A.19 Zaria‐Funtua road and a small river that runs, deeply trenched in red laterite, through the surrounding scrubland. For much of the year this “river” is a spruit of water no more than a foot wide and two inches deep—it is only in electric storms that it hisses as a torrent between the laterite banks—nevertheless, it may be taken as a pledge, at all times of the year, that sufficient subterranean water may be pumped out of the sands of the river‐bed to meet the needs of the University. The large blocks of buildings, in modern concrete idiom, look as if they have been torn from a city and dropped upon this open scrubland.

Expatriates are people who live in a foreign country, but this article confines itself, in the main, to British expatriate librarians and lecturers in librarianship working in English‐speaking Black Africa. Most of the examples are taken from Nigeria, where I have worked as a librarian and as a lecturer since 1975. This is not to say that Nigeria is typical of a continent which is as diverse as Europe or any other, but simply to acknowledge, at the outset, that I am aware of the limitations of generalising on the basis of four years in one country. Few would dispute, however, that those parts of Africa and the rest of the world (including Ireland, my own home country) which experienced British rule have been left with something in common as regards approaches to librarianship as well as to other matters; or dispute that Britain showed little interest in developing libraries in its African colonies until independence was imminent.

THE proposition that British library schools should examine their own students is not a new one. As long ago as 1954, Roy Stokes put the question bluntly to the profession. In those days his was a voice crying in the wilderness. The profession at large was not ready for such a development, and continued to adhere to its long held view that the Library Association should examine the products of the schools, while the schools confined themselves to teaching.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked *, which may be consulted in the Library.

“BY WHAT CRITERIA”, a modern Socrates might ask his pupils, “are we to know that a good woman is good ?” And the pupils, after pondering for many months, might reply “We have sought out many good women and they tell us that their measurements are 36‐23‐36; know therefore that any woman who conforms to these measurements is a good woman, but any woman who fails to so conform is not a good woman”. But Socrates would know that a woman might conform to these measurements yet still be ugly in appearance and shrewish by temperament; cold and unloving, while conversely many women could be paragons of womanliness and be nowhere near these measurements.

SPRING is now well with us, and it is not easy to prophesy what effect the great war will have on our profession, indeed it is impossible to forecast anything whatever about it. So far as libraries are concerned, there are abundant evidences that some librarians have been able to seize the opportunities the time affords them. An interesting example of this is a duplicated list issued by the Bristol Public Libraries offering to readers the titles of the books which in his capital little volume Books and You Somerset Maugham has recommended. It is a pity that the book referred to, which is a small volume of about 80 well‐spaced pages, costs 3s. 6d. Had it been published at 1s. we should recommend that every library should purchase one copy for every five hundred of its readers; and although this would be a large number it would be a thoroughly justifiable purchase, because Maugham, following of course personal standards as every writer must, has selected books which in his own opinion—and his is an opinion of no mean value—are of first hand excellence. In bringing the titles before the public in the way Bristol Libraries has done, Mr. Ross has done a service which most librarians are trying to do in some way or other, but is particularly effective in this particular case. Other libraries are putting out lists of war books, of gardening books, of cookery books and, indeed, on all sorts of practical subjects dealing with the war effort.